Chasing an electrical gremlin. Help needed

My truck is a 2002 4wd with 5vzfe.

I don’t drive my truck often, im in the process of fixing it up and making it a good truck again. I was driving it the other day and smelled burning plastic, I popped the hood and noticed the alternator terminal was glowing red hot. I tested the battery and it’s at 12.8 volts and the 14.6 volts when running, so the alternator is charging the battery. The battery will go dead over night and I know there a parasitic draw somewhere. I tested with an multimeter and confirmed it. I found a loose ground wire, cleaned it and now the parasitic draw shows gone. Truck even runs better now. But while running, the alternator terminal still gets red hot. What next steps should I take to diagnose the red hot terminal?

 

Sounds you got high resistance somewhere. How do the wires amd connections the alternator look. If they are corroded, it could be that. The only other thing i can think of is the voltage regulator.

 

I’m gonna go ahead and swap the alternator then. It’s pretty old anyway. Hopefully that fixes it.